Singer Phoebe Snow, a New Jersey native who was a one-hit wonder with her song “Poetry Man,” had to deal with two brain-damage tragedies during her life. And both probably contributed to her death last week at age 60.
Her death in Edison, N.J., was caused by complications of what some called a stroke, and others called a cerebral hemorrhage, back in January 2010.
But Snow had to deal with brain-related illness long before her own medical problems. She gave birth to a daughter in 1975 who suffered from what one media report called severe brain damage, namely hydrocephalus.
Snow spent much of her life caring for her daughter, Valerie, after she sought — in vain — to find help for her.
“I went through phases of the occult and of trying to find every single doctor in the country who could possibly do something,” Snow once said, according to The New York Times obituary of her. “I realize now that I can’t move mountains.”
Surely, Snow’s remark must strike a cord with other parents who have a child with any kind of brain injury.
Snow wouldn’t lock her daughter, who wasn’t expected to have a long life span, away in an institution. But Valerie did live quite awhile, to age 31, dying in 2007.
Shock jock Howard Stern, in a unusually tender moment, last week dedicated his show to his memories of Snow, according to David Hinckley, who does a radio column in The New York Daily News.
Stern speculated that Snow “died of a broken heart” — in that she was devastated by the death of her daughter. Stern said Valerie had become the “passion” in Snow’s life, who basically put her career on the back burner to take care of her child, according to Hinkley.
It’s a sad irony that Snow, like her daughter, was ultimately killed by a brain injury, just like her daughter.
